Office of the Historian

791.5 MSP/4–1852

Memorandum by the Consultant to the Secretary of State (Cowen) to the Director of the Office of Military Assistance in the Department of Defense (Olmsted)

confidential
[Washington,] May 13, 1952.

Subject:

  • Request Involving Reimbursable Military Assistance under Section 408(e) of the MDAA, as Amended.

Reference is made to the following request:

Note from the Embassy of India to the Department of State dated April 18, 1952,1 requesting authorization to procure from 50 to 200 F–84E, F–80B, F–9F aircraft plus a six years supply of maintenance spare parts. In addition, the request included 54 fully equipped C–119 Fairchild aircraft for delivery between 1954 and 1956.

Although the Department of State approves, from an economic and political viewpoint, the furnishing of a reasonable quantity of the types of aircraft requested under the provisions of Section 408(e) of the MDAA of 1949, as amended,2 this approval is subject to the estimate, by the Department of Defense, of the quantity of aircraft that India’s military requirement can utilize effectively.

The views of the Department of Defense are requested.

M[yron] W. C[owen]
  1. Not printed; the record copy of the Indian Note numbered Air Att/104/AP/1/52 is in Department of State file 791.5 MSP/4–1852.↩
  2. The Mutual Defense Assistance Act of 1949, as amended, was signed into law on July 26, 1950, as Public Law 621. For the text, see 64 Stat. 373.↩